September 3, 2025 • 43 mins
Update on Tara Baker Homicide. Tara Baker was a law student at UGA when she was murdered on January 19, 2001. Her apartment was set on fire to cover-up the murder. It took nearly 10 years to get a death certificate and more than another 10 to arrest a suspect. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case and why the trial of Edrick Lamont Faust, scheduled to begin in October, 2025, has been moved to January 2026.
Transcript Highlights
00:01.05 Introduction
02:34.58 Tara Baker, working and going to law school
05:01.75 Murders of Tara Baker and Laken Riley were less than 5 miles apart
10:08.02 Death Certificate is a "marker"
15:32.75 911 call was for an apartment fire
20:02.45 Firefighters have to be aware of their surroundings
24:56.80 Clothing might not burn - completely
29:56.47 Looking for what isn't destroyed by fire
33:17.54 Strap muscles in neck can indicate strangling
39:06.13 Fire used after the fact
43:42.43 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody Dots with Joseph Scott More. Look, I was a
normal kid growing up. My favorite movies when I was
a kid were probably, let me see, in this order,
it would have to be Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Immediately
after that, in a very close to first would have
(00:23):
to be the actual Willy Wonko movie. I'm not talking
about the Johnny Depp thing that was like a nightmare
to me. That those were my two favorites. And I
have to qualify that by saying I was a normal kid,
because I did actually like stuff like that. But I
got to tell you one movie that had a lasting
impact on me other than The Birds, which I saw
(00:43):
to drive in when I was little and scare the
hell out of me, was the movie The Paper Chase.
I love that movie. I don't know why it is.
I think it didn't have so much to do with
all the associated characters around. It had to do with
John Howse this character. Because I saw that and I thought,
even at that young age when it came out in
(01:05):
nineteen seventy three, I thought, Wow, wouldn't it be great
to be a lawyer? And it didn't hurt that the
man in my life that I idolized the most was
my uncle, who wound up being a prosecutor in the
New Orleans area and eventually became a judge, a district judge,
(01:27):
and then eventually an appellate judge, and it just seemed
like a magical environment. It was harsh, it was hard,
but you could see within that framework of that. I
don't know that theatrical piece. I guess that there was
something to it. It had real resonance with me, even
(01:49):
at a very young age. You know, if it hadn't
been for my uncle that I idolized, I probably would
have become an attorney, because at one point in time
I told him that, and he said, if you do,
I'll never speak to you again. So with that said,
I'd like to take you back in time today to
(02:10):
talk about a first year law student. A first year
law student who had all of the promise in the world.
Her entire life was ahead of her. She had already
completed two undergraduate degrees, one in political science and one
in paralegal, which is no easy fet she was working
(02:33):
and going to law school. Today, we're going to spend
a little time thinking about terror. Baker law student, University
of Georgia, who died back in twenty a one. Coming
(02:55):
to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. I don't
know why it was David. I used to think that
I would be good at arguing before court, and I
(03:16):
think that we romanticize that. You don't really think about
the grind that law is. I think people see folks
come into court on television and they think that that's
all there is to it. And of course that's a
rather simplistic view of the world because there's so much
stuff that goes on behind the scenes before you ever make.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
It to court.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
If you're going to be if you're going to be
that type of attorney, because there's multiple roads, kind of
like medicine. You can go down and never walk inside
of a court, and people don't, but you have to
be prepared, you know, to do this and along the way.
But I was thinking about Terra's case the other day
(03:57):
because it came came across my desk and I was
still when Terra was murdered. I was still with the
medical examiner in Atlanta. Now this happened in Athens, which
is I don't know, depend upon where you're going, maybe
seventy miles away from Atlanta. And it was statewide news
(04:22):
because it happened at the flagship university in the state
of Georgia, and stuff like this just never happened. And
you know what else, it made me reflective of Dave.
We've just come through the horror and the brutality of
what happened to lakeln Riley. Just I guess last year,
(04:44):
you know with it? Yeah, and it's it's weird, isn't
it weird? And I know that you've you've been involved
in media your entire life, but isn't it interesting how
it kind of rises and falls? You know? The terror
Baker case consumed everything for so long in the media,
and then I hadn't thought about it in years until
(05:06):
it came across my desk with some information we're going
to tell you about. But yet, you know, with Laken,
that happened, and that was in the news forever and ever,
and of course that's passed on now we still you know,
remember obviously, but it's out of the news cycle. It
and you know what, these two homicides Dave occurred within
(05:28):
five miles of each other.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Wow, yeah know that.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, they did, yet I'll never forget you. I think
it's Fawn Drive is the actual name of the street
where where Tara lost her life. Let me rephrase that
she didn't lose it, where she was robbed of her
life and then of course Laken was robbed of her
life not too far away from there, Dave.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, you know the background. If you don't know, I'm
going to give you just the couple of line. It's okay.
Tara Baker, beautiful popular law student at Uga.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Now didn't she already have two bachelor's degree?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yes, okay, she'd gone to Georgia College, which I think
I think is Militiville Georgia, which is south of south
of Athens. Yeah, this is a.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
This is somebody who actually is really on the ball, committed.
It's not just enough to be smart to pull off
this type of education. You actually have to spend a
lot of time. You know, there's a lot of smart
people in the world that are intellectually lazy. This that
was not Tara Baker. Tara Baker was smart and type
(06:41):
a personality. So hours before she turns twenty four years old,
and I think about this show, what I was like
at you know, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, she
would not have given me the time of day, you know,
I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
She would have gone, you'd lose her. Get out of here.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
He's discovered murdered in her off campus apartment. Yeah, or
killer set fire to her bedroom to try to mask
the crime and destroy evidence. That pretty much gives you
the thumbnail. And again, it happened in two thousand and one,
and we're talking about it in twenty twenty five because
(07:22):
for over twenty years it was an unsolved case.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yep, it laid there.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I mean, we've got a beautiful woman murdered in the
one place she should feel safe, and you couldn't solve it.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Come on, there has to be a way.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
And so when this case became national news again, it
was because got a suspect.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And how did they get that all these years later?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Joe, I know, it's amazing to me, Dave. This case
also is I'll go ahead and use the word some
people might take exception to it, and I just don't care. Uh.
And that's the word notorious. This case was notorious. And
let me tell you why. As is our theme on bodybacks,
(08:19):
and shall remain our theme. As I am sitting behind
the microphone. Families are an extension of the victim, and
they are victims as well. This case was notorious, Dave
from an investigative standpoint, because they didn't give the family
(08:43):
any information. It was there. What's the old saying? Their
silence is deafening? Dave? Can I throw it a figure
out to you? Now? This is this is going to
blow your mind? Are you ready for this? She died
in twenty oh one. Take a wild guess when the
(09:06):
corner issued the death certificate?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh wow? Now ten wow?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Why twenty ten?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Why it takes so long to get that?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's it? It baffles the mind, you know, and you
have this, you know, there's one thing, you know, I
know we hammer or I do, I hammer away at
the idea of closure. But there are these little benchmarks
along the way as a person is going through grief,
and you can and look, psychologists have talked about it
(09:39):
for years and years that these little elements along the
way where you're kind of not really benchmarks, mile post,
you know, where you're headed towards some kind of semblance
of healing. And I've always felt that that death certificate
just in and of itself. It's symbolizes a new stage,
(10:04):
as painful as it is when a family can actually
take it and look at it, and they have this
official document where they can reflect on it. And it
might be the most painful information in the world. And
I promise you I've read thousands of test certificates. The
information contained on that one sheet of paper is horribly
painful for many people. But yet it is information. It's information. Information,
(10:31):
Dave is like a bomb on the soul of an
individual that is grieving. They have something and it's their
choice as to how they can use it, and they
can factor it into their brain and all these sorts
of things. But can you imagine going nine years and
not having a death certificate that I just I couldn't
(10:56):
you know, plumb the depths of it. I remember back
then because, like I said, I was still working in Atlanta.
And as a matter of fact, I might get this wrong,
but it seems as though that our doctors in Atlanta
were still working. They were our doctors moved back and
forth between the Atlanta office and the State's office. Now
(11:19):
that might have ceased by them, I think that they
probably had already hired their own standalone medical examiner. But
we knew all of those guys. And it's not that
they didn't have information at autopsy because look, the medical
examiner in a corner state, okay, they send bodies away
to have them autopsy because in many corner states they
(11:42):
don't have a forensic pathologist that is, in fact, a
medical examiner as well towards just one of those places.
So if you're in like Athens, Clark County, the corner
there is not a forensic pathologist, so they have to
send the body to another location, have the body autopsied
by a forensicist. That forensic pathologist turns those results over
(12:04):
to the corner and the corner is actually what's referred
to as the certifier of death. Okay, they take the
information from the medical examiner, make their determination, they sign
off on it. Wow, and that seems Yeah, it's an
interesting Yeah, it's it's a it's an odd thing, and
it's not just limited to Georgia. But the fact that
(12:24):
it took so long, you know, Look, I can there
are cases out there where you know, and I know
because we've we've covered them. I mean, just look at
Ellen Greenberg back and forth with her death certificate. But
at least they had a death certificate, you know. And look,
they'll go back and they'll mend it, they'll change it,
(12:45):
they'll do all these sorts of things, but at least
there is some kind of official document that from an
official perspective says that, Okay, we are certifying that your
loved one is dead, deceased, and gone, and here are
the causal factors and here's the manner, which there's only
five of them that we've ruled that this category that
(13:06):
you know your loved one's death falls under this category.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And Baker's family didn't have any of that.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
No, no, they they would be given something in writing,
you know that says, you know, this might be what
we think that it is, but it's not the official
like finished death certificate that didn't come about until twenty ten.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
All right, Well, Joe, when this was called in, when
first responders arrive, they're there for a fire. They're not
there because of a dead body. They're not there because
of anything other than a fire was called in. They arrive,
they go to the bedroom, which is started in the
bedroom on the mattress. I'm going to I'm guessing there.
I don't know that for a fact. Okay, where did
(13:51):
the fires start that they came there to put out?
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, that I'm glad you brought that up, because this
goes to I think now we'll talk about whoever the
perpetrator was in this case, because day this goes to
a certain level of unsophistication. Fire is a very if
you're going to utilize it, not you, but the universal you.
If you're going to try to destroy something with fire,
(14:16):
particularly from the perspective of an arson, you can really
gauge the sophistication of the perpetrator by how they start
a fire. And from what we understand, this individual was
so unsophisticated and maybe underprepared that this cat decided to
(14:42):
pile clothes in the bottom of a closet, strike a match,
and set it on fire. One sixty Fawn Drive, Athens, Georgia.
(15:07):
You know they get this, they get this call.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
They're called to a fire.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Putting out a fire. That's why I've always been a
fan of firefighters. I love these cats. I love what
they're able to do because it is it is the ultimate,
the ultimate public service kind of job. And you talk
about multitasking. If you go into a fully involved environment,
which these guys are some of the bravest cats in
(15:33):
the face of plan as far as I'm concerned. They
do it every single day. You have to have total
situational awareness when you walk into this place. First off,
you're handling one of the most cumbersome pieces of equipment
any known to mankind, which is a fire hose. And
if you've never if you've ever seen a video of
a fire hose going wild on the road, you'd rather
(15:55):
be holding onto an anaconda because it will beat you
to death. And you have to know what you're doing.
And then not only that, you're walking in with this
and they've got their axes and their pikes and all
that stuff that the team goes in with. They've got
somebody knocking down the fire, they've got an assistant guy
that's holding the hose, you know, and their head is
(16:16):
always on the swivel. Remember, for a firefighter, it's not
necessarily getting the fire knocked down as much as it
is trying to save lives. So they have this incredible
situational awareness where they're looking around. I think that you know,
in their training they are taught what to do in
(16:38):
the event that they see a person in there. Now,
just because you have a person doesn't necessarily mean they're deceased,
because I mean, listen, people can people can succumb or
I hate to use succumb. People can literally still be
alive with very shallow breathing, but they've been subjected to
(17:00):
smoke in elation, and so they'll check them for pulse.
You know, all these firefighters now or at least basic
paramedics to a certain degree, and they've got advanced life
saving saving skills and they can you know, kind of
assess people in an environment by the way, that is
on fire right and things are falling. That's the other
(17:22):
terrible part of this. So when they make entry into
this home, which by the way, is not an old
this is like kind of a series of ground level
kind of apartment kind of things that are there there standalone.
It's not like a tall structure. You're worried. You're worried
(17:43):
that first off, it's going to jump. That's one of
the big things. Interesting. You know, this call came up
at like eleven I think of like eleven twenty or
that's when the first first people rolled up on the scene.
Eleven twenty am, not PM. This is broad daylight ball,
And so they go in and they see what appears
(18:05):
to be a person. And of course, after you know,
after all a sudden done and they're getting the fire
under control and knock down, they realize that, you know,
this individual has deceased. So, I don't know, it's an
interesting world that they inhabit because you never know what
you're going to find or see when you walk in.
And here's another thing, And I just want folks to
(18:27):
understand this, how dynamic this is. When firefighters go into
a scene. It's kind of like EMTs when they roll
up on a motor vehicle accident or they roll out
on a shooting. They're not there to try to appreciate
the value of anything of anything in there that has
evidentiary value. Their sole purpose in this world is to
(18:48):
save lives. And we understand that those of us that
are last responders, we know that we have to interpret
even through the debris field that they've created when they're
trying to knock down the knock down the fire. See.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
So yeah, I mean, do you pull these guys in
after you know, when you're sitting there and you yeah,
you you challenge could not challenge question them over what
did you see when you first locked in the room?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Absolutely, And it's not done in a confrontational manner because
I see them as the heroes here. I'm nobody, you
know when when I'm talking to these cats. The beauty
thing about them is that, let's see, how can I
put this? They are vested, okay, but they're not. They
(19:36):
they're going to go into the next fire, and so
they have the ability. Their ability to recall what they
see is amazing in these traumatic circumstances because you know,
like me, if the thing was on fire, I'm getting
as far away from this thing as I can. They're
going to huddle up next to this thing and try
to knock it down, all right, and they're observing everything.
They have to be completely aware of what the fire
(19:59):
is in a affecting in order to knock it down.
So after they have completed their job and the investigators
show up, and that includes people like me, the police investigators,
and certainly the arson investigators, they will debrief and you
might talk directly to the team off the truck that
(20:19):
rolled in their first you're going to talk to their
lieutenant who's there, because they're going to write reports you
just and we have that understanding with them, this rapport,
if you will, about what kind of information we can
get from them. And in terrorist case, they were able
to determine that she was in fact deceased. I don't
(20:42):
know exactly what they saw specifically, because I'll go ahead
and let the cat out of the bag here. We're
going to find out. We're going to find out at
the turn of the new year, because this case is
finally going to go to trial with thousands and thousands
of documents, and there's a lot still that has not
(21:04):
been revealed about this case. And I understand that part
of it, but we're going to learn more. We're going
to learn more from the arson investigators because Dave back
to that pile of clothes, they call this an arson.
They've ruled out everything else. This is not like an
accidental event, you know, faulty wiring or a kerosene lantern
(21:27):
turned over, or is outlandish in that sense. I've actually
had people burn up from kerosene lanterns. By the way,
they're going to go in and they're going to tell
us in detail what they found, And with an arson
in particular, you look for the where the fire started.
(21:51):
And one of the kind of fascinating things is it
kind of at a baseline, you look for where the
most damned which has occurred. That makes sense, right, It's
very logical you look for because that means the fire
has been burning longer there than any other location. Okay,
but they were able to identify a pile of clothes,
(22:14):
so that means that the pile of clothes to in
some ways survived. Well Morgan, how to do that? If
you're talking about fire, you never know. There might have
been buttons, there might have been zippers, pile on top
of each other. That. Yeah, the fire is going to
maybe eradicate the cloth that the thing is made out of,
(22:34):
that the garment is made out of. But all those
little elements are going to drop down, you know, and
you're going to have them. There was there any accelerant involved?
Did somebody pour you know, uh, charcoal lighter or did
they use gasoline or what did they use? So that's
going to be something else that they would have no
(22:55):
pun intended sniffed out. I wonder back then, did they
bring arsen dogs on there. I know that they probably
collected samples from that whole area, and that debris field
right there. They would have lifted that entire thing up.
They probably put it in a sifter like you see
with archaeologist and anything that's in there, those little bits,
they're going to look for, particularly metallic bodies. And I
(23:17):
don't think it's hard to fathom this, but you don't
think about things that hold things together in life. When
you get into a debris field like this, you can
have bits of metal all over the place. This like
if you try to go into an environment like this
with a metal detector as opposed to like out in
an open field where somebody's been shot, you know, looking
for a projectile. It's kneeling a haystack tom because there's
(23:41):
so much metal in a house that you don't think about.
You know. It could be a button, it could be
a zipper, it could be paper clip it it could
be staples for all you know. So it could be
the nails that held down the carpet. All right, the
carpet might be gone, but those nails are still going
to be there. It's it's really a very highly specialized
(24:02):
form of an investigation.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
But when you for anybody who has ever had a
burn pile out in the backyard, not in a barrel,
but actually a pile that you made to burn things.
If you've ever seen this where maybe you put too
much on the pile to burn and you light it,
the fire burns the outside of the whatever you're burning,
and then if you pile stuff on top of it,
(24:25):
you just throwing it on there, putting too much on there,
and it starts to smolder and what have you. As
it catches more fires and more oxygen comes in, it
actually burns the outer shell. But you could in this
case with clothing, you could still have clothing that is
relatively unburned that's towards the bottom of the pile or
in the middle of the pile, because.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
It could and you know where else you're going to
have clothing if an individual is clothed. Let's just say
you've got an individual that is lying on their back
and killed. Say somebody has choked out and they're lying
on their back and somebody douses them in an accelerant.
(25:06):
You know, something flammable sets the body or the clothing
on fire. That reominant of clothing is still going to
be on their back because it's not burning. There's separation
between the body and the exterior, the upside of the
body rather the visible side. Well, those fragments of clothing,
(25:28):
you might still have fragments, but they're going to be
sign but you can roll the body over and when
you see that, you'll still be able to fully appreciate,
fully appreciate, you know, make manufacture. The tags will still
be in the in the collar. That's why you look
at the sophistication of somebody that sets a fire. Now,
(25:52):
I don't think that the fire was necessarily set in
this case in order to eradicate any evidence that a
human being was there. It was meant, I think, to
eradicate any kind of evidence that may have been there.
And of course this individual failed miserably because at the
(26:14):
conclusion of their investigation, we now know that not only
did he not eradicate the evidence of where the fire started,
he certainly didn't cover up what Terror's cause of death was. Fire,
(26:48):
in fact, is arguably the most destructive force in the
worldarticularly the world that we live in. You know, where
we're congregated together in neighborhoods and you know, all of
these sorts of things. It certainly strikes fear. I think
(27:09):
that most people would agree with that, it strikes fear fire.
We're just naturally fearful of it. Whereas you know, you
get me with a good a high quality glass of
rum and a really good cigar, and I start a
fire at my bonfire site. I'll sit there and stare
at it and try to warm up to it and
all that sort of thing. But that's beside the point.
(27:30):
For people that utilize fire, they have this idea, Dave,
that you're going to eradicate everything, and of course that
is an empirical impossibility. You can't. You can't as a
matter of fact, And I know we've talked about this before,
but as a matter of fact, by virtue of introducing
(27:51):
fire and accelerance into an environment, you're actually creating more evidence.
Now we might be absent some things, but sometimes you
can create more evidence. You can create evidence that many
people don't think about, like the intensity of fire. If
I have a location where or if I have a
(28:13):
body that has been burned, let's say that their head
is more affected or damaged than their lower limbs, I
know that somebody has made an attempt to maybe even
put more accelerant on the head in the face than
they did on the feet and that they just keep
(28:33):
adding it to it over a period of time. And
that's those little nuanced areas that you have to look at.
Fire investigation, by far is the most difficult practice in
forensic science and is in my opinion, it's the most
(28:55):
esteemed relative to the guys that go out in the
field and do it. It takes so much training. You
have to have an awareness that most people don't because
I walk into a house fire, David, and everything looks
black and gray to me, and it would to you
too everybody else. But arson investigators, let me tell you something,
They walk into an environment and they have a completely
(29:16):
different spectrum that they're looking at this thing through. They
don't see just black and gray. Like if you were
to take the grill cover off of your charcoal grill,
you and I would look down and we'd see mushed
up bits of you know, old charcoal that's just kind
of settling there. And that's the way fire feels look
like debris feels to us. But for those that are
(29:40):
trained in arson, certainly not for us. Though. In forensic
medicine and medical legal death investigation, there's certain things that
we look for in the autopsy room that fire doesn't destroy,
and in this case a lot was left behind relative
to terrors homicide.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
All right, is the fire the reason it took nine
years to actually get formal documentation on her death?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Good question. I don't know that it was because, listen,
the GBI was involved in this investigation, the State Medical
Examiner was. So what makes her case different from all
the other fire deaths? You know that State Medical Examiner's
offices located the Primary, The Primary what they refer to
(30:36):
as headquarters there is located just east of it of
downtown Atlanta in De Caap County, Dave. They see fire
deaths all the time. They roll in from all over
the state. I mean literally, they have a transport system
that brings bodies to that location from all over the
state of Georgiana. Now they have satellite labs that are
out there, but can you imagine, I mean, they're servicing
(31:00):
lots of counties. You're going to have fire deaths. So
what separates Terra's death from all the other fire deaths
that are out there that they're still having a piece
together and try to understand. I think that I think
that it lies somewhere else. I truly do, because they
(31:22):
were able to determine manner and cause of death. I mean,
you know, they they ruled her death as a homicide. Okay,
they ruled it as a homicide. And they found physical
evidence of trauma. And I'm not talking to David. I
am not talking here about some kind of you know,
(31:46):
type of trauma. That is, they found things that are
so detailed relative to her death, they would have seen
that in the immediate You want to know what I'm
thinking about right now. Yeah, what I'm thinking about right
now is that they're looking at a young lady who
(32:10):
has died and has been burned or has been subjected
to fire in proximity to fire, and Dave, they were
able to appreciate that she's been strangled. Now that's pretty
that's pretty dog on obvious. Okay, because when you when
you go into an autopsy and you begin to reflect
(32:32):
the tissue on the neck, okay, which is something that's
commonly done. You reflect, I say reflect reflect actually is
a term that you used, like kind of appealing back,
if you will, so that you're not just looking at
the skin. You're looking at the musculature beneath the skin.
(32:53):
And there's a particular way in which we do this.
I'm not going to go into it right now, but
when you reflect that skin, you can act actually look
at the neck and you see you hear me talk
about strap muscles many times in the neck. If you'll
just kind of place your hand on your anterior neck
on either side of your laynix, you know that cartilaginous body,
(33:15):
it's right in the middle there in those muscle groups
right there. If someone has been strangled, whether it's with
a ligature like a rope or if it's a manual
strangulation where you're talking about the hands, you're going to
see focal areas of hemorrhage in there. Well, Dave, I
got to tell you, brother, they I think they saw
that that day. They saw that there. So I'm coming
back to what you had mentioned about why did it
(33:38):
takes along? You know where I'm hoping that we really
get a solid answer, And I think Defense council will
probably ask this, why did it take along? You know?
And I don't care if the defense is asking it right,
they're going to have to, you know, maybe they'll have
to explain that court. I don't know. It might be
a question that will come up. But not only did
(33:59):
they find that this poor young lady had been strangled.
They discovered that she had been beaten, which we know
that if there's evidence of beating, that means that the
injuries that are presenting on her body that happened in life.
(34:20):
This was not post mortem. Neither was the hemorrhage in
her neck. So this is an anti mortem event that's
leading to death. Oh and by the way, yes, she
was stabbed too. And here's here's one of the more
ghastly things. And I'm not going to go into detail
about this, and you can take away from it what
you what you want. But this suspect that they have
(34:43):
in custody, Dave, they have charged him with aggravated sodomy.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Holy moly.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Okay, so that's that's different than rape. Now, you know,
all all our friends out there, they can draw their
own conclusions about that. But we're going to learn more
about that in this trial that's going to happen after
the first year. And I think that probably the picture
that is painted is going to be something that is
(35:09):
so horrific when this begins to play out, you know,
in the courtroom there in Athens, Clark County, Georgia, it's
going to be. It's going to be very striking. They're
going to have a Dave forgive me. You had mentioned
a number a moment ago, and it was almost mind boggling.
(35:30):
How much documentation do they have on this case?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Twenty five thousand documents associated with this case, And as
you and I were talking, it doesn't mean twenty five
thousand pages. It means twenty five thousand folders that could
contain one you know, it could be one sheet of
information from a police report to a full one hundred
page report on the button they found in the bathroom.
(35:54):
I mean it varies. But twenty five thousand documents. And
when the discussion came up about the case and being
prepared for trial, it wasn't the defense asking for more time.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
It was both.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
They were both fine being the prosecution and defense. Really again, now,
a lot of times we come into a case and
we want to see the bad guy put away, which
is well, we always come into a case like that,
But we are supposedly looking for the truth. And if
you're looking for the truth, the prosecutors have to be
open to actually looking at all the information as well,
(36:28):
not just the defense looking for holes. They're looking at
the entire case to make sure they have everything. So
for the prosecutors to say, yeah, there's so much information
we've got to go through. We're cool. We're good with
taking till January. You know, we have gone twenty four
years now. A couple more months is going to be fine.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
But Joe how the people shepherd saught something in the
news as well. The family. The family was good with
that too. Good.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I'm glad I saw that.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
The comment about that. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Good, I'm glad they were because I you know, I
do think about the families.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
It's just it's more than just reporting on what's taking place.
It's really has over the years become more about the family.
I always think about the parents and the children and
extended family members who've lived with this nightmare.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
But well, you know, here here's a really sad portion
of this day. Terror's Daddy's gone. Now.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I know.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
That hurts, you know, and that's you know, when he
closed his eyes and death. You know, you think about
mm stuff. Yeah, it is, it really is, man. You know,
you think about what were his and I would not
(37:41):
presume to know, but you know, you you get wrapped
up in the tragedy of it all, and it really is.
I hope this is what I hope and uh and
I really do have hope. I hope that that they
have covered all of their bases from a prosecution stand point,
that everything has been considered in this case. I'm sorry, continue,
(38:04):
I just know it just wells up in you after
a while.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Man, it does.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
And Joey, what condition was her body when the fire
is out? We now have a victim here? What condition
was her body when they called in?
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, it's hard to know at this point in time
because a lot of that information has not not come out.
I want to know. I'd like to know specifically to
what degree she was subjected to heat injuries. Okay, I'd
like to know, first off, the level of trauma. They
(38:47):
talked about sharp force injuries, they've talked about beating, and
that assessment will be you know, on full display, you know,
in you know, on the stand when, because they're gonna
and this will be a very dramatic moment day because
there in this particular case, the forensic pathologist will literally
(39:09):
be able to tell us about those last moments of
her life. Fire has a way of doing that. You know,
they'll be able to talk to things about, you know,
like smoke inholation and all those sorts of things. I
don't know that that that will be an issue. They
would have done a car box of human cloth. And
it seems as though in this particular case that that
(39:32):
fire was used after the fact. And here's a really
odd bit to this day. In our previous segment, we
talked about when the first responders and you'd made note
of this, thank you for that that first responders rolled
out at you know, just passed. Well, it's like eleven
(39:53):
what was it, eleven, twenty eleven, twenty a m. Man, Am,
here's the thing, Dave. This will make your skin, this
will this will put us this will put a chill
on you. That fire was started in the middle of
the day or in the mid morning. And back then
(40:15):
I remember they were talking about there was no cover
to hide. If you're going to burn something up, you know,
set a structure on fire. That's something where you kind
of steal away in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
She was last seen, I believe by her friends. She missed,
missed a meeting and and then she is at home.
The one chilling thing about this, how long was this
monster in the house with her? I just let that
(40:52):
sink in just for a second, and as a final
I do. We're going to set a fire, and we
feel confident enough that upon setting set fire, we're gonna
walk away in the middle of the day, and we're
not We're not talking about a city here that's kind
(41:14):
of sleepy, you know, you're talking about the largest campus
in the state of Georgia, that it is existing in
a very busy town and you're going to set a
fire and just walk away in broad daylight. What had
happened the hours prior to That's what I want to know.
(41:35):
And that's that's what is so chilling about this case
because to me, I think that there might be elements
of torture involved in this, perhaps menacing, you know, as
her life is going to slip away, she knows that
(41:57):
it's not going to end well. And that's the It's
very sad, I mean it is. But we do know
that we have somebody in custody and what's his name again.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Dave Edric Lamont Boust. He's been charged with felony murdered,
two counts, aggravated assault, possession of a knife during the
commission of a crime aggravated sawdom me, concealing the death
of another person, campering with evidence, and first jury arson.
Those charges let you know a lot of information about
what's going to come out of trial.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yeah, they do, they do. I mean you're talking about
stacking it to the ceiling on this guy. It's uh
and you can It's like a road map, isn't it, Dave,
You know all of those counts along the way. You
know what's going to happen with him? Well, I'll tell you.
He's going to go into the Athens Clark County Courthouse
(42:53):
with his defense team, and I hope he's prepared because
it sounds as though that the state has had a
fishent amount of time put the case together. They've certainly
got an overwhelming number of documents. Let's just hope that
they do, in fact prosecute this case in a manner
(43:17):
in which would honor Terra and her family that have
been waiting for so very many years. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Bodybacks
Quody Dots with Joseph Scott More. Look, I was a
normal kid growing up. My favorite movies when I was
a kid were probably, let me see, in this order,
it would have to be Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Immediately
after that, in a very close to first would have
(00:23):
to be the actual Willy Wonko movie. I'm not talking
about the Johnny Depp thing that was like a nightmare
to me. That those were my two favorites. And I
have to qualify that by saying I was a normal kid,
because I did actually like stuff like that. But I
got to tell you one movie that had a lasting
impact on me other than The Birds, which I saw
(00:43):
to drive in when I was little and scare the
hell out of me, was the movie The Paper Chase.
I love that movie. I don't know why it is.
I think it didn't have so much to do with
all the associated characters around. It had to do with
John Howse this character. Because I saw that and I thought,
even at that young age when it came out in
(01:05):
nineteen seventy three, I thought, Wow, wouldn't it be great
to be a lawyer? And it didn't hurt that the
man in my life that I idolized the most was
my uncle, who wound up being a prosecutor in the
New Orleans area and eventually became a judge, a district judge,
(01:27):
and then eventually an appellate judge, and it just seemed
like a magical environment. It was harsh, it was hard,
but you could see within that framework of that. I
don't know that theatrical piece. I guess that there was
something to it. It had real resonance with me, even
(01:49):
at a very young age. You know, if it hadn't
been for my uncle that I idolized, I probably would
have become an attorney, because at one point in time
I told him that, and he said, if you do,
I'll never speak to you again. So with that said,
I'd like to take you back in time today to
(02:10):
talk about a first year law student. A first year
law student who had all of the promise in the world.
Her entire life was ahead of her. She had already
completed two undergraduate degrees, one in political science and one
in paralegal, which is no easy fet she was working
(02:33):
and going to law school. Today, we're going to spend
a little time thinking about terror. Baker law student, University
of Georgia, who died back in twenty a one. Coming
(02:55):
to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. I don't
know why it was David. I used to think that
I would be good at arguing before court, and I
(03:16):
think that we romanticize that. You don't really think about
the grind that law is. I think people see folks
come into court on television and they think that that's
all there is to it. And of course that's a
rather simplistic view of the world because there's so much
stuff that goes on behind the scenes before you ever make.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
It to court.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
If you're going to be if you're going to be
that type of attorney, because there's multiple roads, kind of
like medicine. You can go down and never walk inside
of a court, and people don't, but you have to
be prepared, you know, to do this and along the way.
But I was thinking about Terra's case the other day
(03:57):
because it came came across my desk and I was
still when Terra was murdered. I was still with the
medical examiner in Atlanta. Now this happened in Athens, which
is I don't know, depend upon where you're going, maybe
seventy miles away from Atlanta. And it was statewide news
(04:22):
because it happened at the flagship university in the state
of Georgia, and stuff like this just never happened. And
you know what else, it made me reflective of Dave.
We've just come through the horror and the brutality of
what happened to lakeln Riley. Just I guess last year,
(04:44):
you know with it? Yeah, and it's it's weird, isn't
it weird? And I know that you've you've been involved
in media your entire life, but isn't it interesting how
it kind of rises and falls? You know? The terror
Baker case consumed everything for so long in the media,
and then I hadn't thought about it in years until
(05:06):
it came across my desk with some information we're going
to tell you about. But yet, you know, with Laken,
that happened, and that was in the news forever and ever,
and of course that's passed on now we still you know,
remember obviously, but it's out of the news cycle. It
and you know what, these two homicides Dave occurred within
(05:28):
five miles of each other.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Wow, yeah know that.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, they did, yet I'll never forget you. I think
it's Fawn Drive is the actual name of the street
where where Tara lost her life. Let me rephrase that
she didn't lose it, where she was robbed of her
life and then of course Laken was robbed of her
life not too far away from there, Dave.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, you know the background. If you don't know, I'm
going to give you just the couple of line. It's okay.
Tara Baker, beautiful popular law student at Uga.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Now didn't she already have two bachelor's degree?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yes, okay, she'd gone to Georgia College, which I think
I think is Militiville Georgia, which is south of south
of Athens. Yeah, this is a.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
This is somebody who actually is really on the ball, committed.
It's not just enough to be smart to pull off
this type of education. You actually have to spend a
lot of time. You know, there's a lot of smart
people in the world that are intellectually lazy. This that
was not Tara Baker. Tara Baker was smart and type
(06:41):
a personality. So hours before she turns twenty four years old,
and I think about this show, what I was like
at you know, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, she
would not have given me the time of day, you know,
I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
She would have gone, you'd lose her. Get out of here.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
He's discovered murdered in her off campus apartment. Yeah, or
killer set fire to her bedroom to try to mask
the crime and destroy evidence. That pretty much gives you
the thumbnail. And again, it happened in two thousand and one,
and we're talking about it in twenty twenty five because
(07:22):
for over twenty years it was an unsolved case.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yep, it laid there.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I mean, we've got a beautiful woman murdered in the
one place she should feel safe, and you couldn't solve it.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Come on, there has to be a way.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
And so when this case became national news again, it
was because got a suspect.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And how did they get that all these years later?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Joe, I know, it's amazing to me, Dave. This case
also is I'll go ahead and use the word some
people might take exception to it, and I just don't care. Uh.
And that's the word notorious. This case was notorious. And
let me tell you why. As is our theme on bodybacks,
(08:19):
and shall remain our theme. As I am sitting behind
the microphone. Families are an extension of the victim, and
they are victims as well. This case was notorious, Dave
from an investigative standpoint, because they didn't give the family
(08:43):
any information. It was there. What's the old saying? Their
silence is deafening? Dave? Can I throw it a figure
out to you? Now? This is this is going to
blow your mind? Are you ready for this? She died
in twenty oh one. Take a wild guess when the
(09:06):
corner issued the death certificate?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh wow? Now ten wow?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Why twenty ten?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Why it takes so long to get that?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's it? It baffles the mind, you know, and you
have this, you know, there's one thing, you know, I
know we hammer or I do, I hammer away at
the idea of closure. But there are these little benchmarks
along the way as a person is going through grief,
and you can and look, psychologists have talked about it
(09:39):
for years and years that these little elements along the
way where you're kind of not really benchmarks, mile post,
you know, where you're headed towards some kind of semblance
of healing. And I've always felt that that death certificate
just in and of itself. It's symbolizes a new stage,
(10:04):
as painful as it is when a family can actually
take it and look at it, and they have this
official document where they can reflect on it. And it
might be the most painful information in the world. And
I promise you I've read thousands of test certificates. The
information contained on that one sheet of paper is horribly
painful for many people. But yet it is information. It's information. Information,
(10:31):
Dave is like a bomb on the soul of an
individual that is grieving. They have something and it's their
choice as to how they can use it, and they
can factor it into their brain and all these sorts
of things. But can you imagine going nine years and
not having a death certificate that I just I couldn't
(10:56):
you know, plumb the depths of it. I remember back
then because, like I said, I was still working in Atlanta.
And as a matter of fact, I might get this wrong,
but it seems as though that our doctors in Atlanta
were still working. They were our doctors moved back and
forth between the Atlanta office and the State's office. Now
(11:19):
that might have ceased by them, I think that they
probably had already hired their own standalone medical examiner. But
we knew all of those guys. And it's not that
they didn't have information at autopsy because look, the medical
examiner in a corner state, okay, they send bodies away
to have them autopsy because in many corner states they
(11:42):
don't have a forensic pathologist that is, in fact, a
medical examiner as well towards just one of those places.
So if you're in like Athens, Clark County, the corner
there is not a forensic pathologist, so they have to
send the body to another location, have the body autopsied
by a forensicist. That forensic pathologist turns those results over
(12:04):
to the corner and the corner is actually what's referred
to as the certifier of death. Okay, they take the
information from the medical examiner, make their determination, they sign
off on it. Wow, and that seems Yeah, it's an
interesting Yeah, it's it's a it's an odd thing, and
it's not just limited to Georgia. But the fact that
(12:24):
it took so long, you know, Look, I can there
are cases out there where you know, and I know
because we've we've covered them. I mean, just look at
Ellen Greenberg back and forth with her death certificate. But
at least they had a death certificate, you know. And look,
they'll go back and they'll mend it, they'll change it,
(12:45):
they'll do all these sorts of things, but at least
there is some kind of official document that from an
official perspective says that, Okay, we are certifying that your
loved one is dead, deceased, and gone, and here are
the causal factors and here's the manner, which there's only
five of them that we've ruled that this category that
(13:06):
you know your loved one's death falls under this category.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And Baker's family didn't have any of that.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
No, no, they they would be given something in writing,
you know that says, you know, this might be what
we think that it is, but it's not the official
like finished death certificate that didn't come about until twenty ten.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
All right, Well, Joe, when this was called in, when
first responders arrive, they're there for a fire. They're not
there because of a dead body. They're not there because
of anything other than a fire was called in. They arrive,
they go to the bedroom, which is started in the
bedroom on the mattress. I'm going to I'm guessing there.
I don't know that for a fact. Okay, where did
(13:51):
the fires start that they came there to put out?
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, that I'm glad you brought that up, because this
goes to I think now we'll talk about whoever the
perpetrator was in this case, because day this goes to
a certain level of unsophistication. Fire is a very if
you're going to utilize it, not you, but the universal you.
If you're going to try to destroy something with fire,
(14:16):
particularly from the perspective of an arson, you can really
gauge the sophistication of the perpetrator by how they start
a fire. And from what we understand, this individual was
so unsophisticated and maybe underprepared that this cat decided to
(14:42):
pile clothes in the bottom of a closet, strike a match,
and set it on fire. One sixty Fawn Drive, Athens, Georgia.
(15:07):
You know they get this, they get this call.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
They're called to a fire.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Putting out a fire. That's why I've always been a
fan of firefighters. I love these cats. I love what
they're able to do because it is it is the ultimate,
the ultimate public service kind of job. And you talk
about multitasking. If you go into a fully involved environment,
which these guys are some of the bravest cats in
(15:33):
the face of plan as far as I'm concerned. They
do it every single day. You have to have total
situational awareness when you walk into this place. First off,
you're handling one of the most cumbersome pieces of equipment
any known to mankind, which is a fire hose. And
if you've never if you've ever seen a video of
a fire hose going wild on the road, you'd rather
(15:55):
be holding onto an anaconda because it will beat you
to death. And you have to know what you're doing.
And then not only that, you're walking in with this
and they've got their axes and their pikes and all
that stuff that the team goes in with. They've got
somebody knocking down the fire, they've got an assistant guy
that's holding the hose, you know, and their head is
(16:16):
always on the swivel. Remember, for a firefighter, it's not
necessarily getting the fire knocked down as much as it
is trying to save lives. So they have this incredible
situational awareness where they're looking around. I think that you know,
in their training they are taught what to do in
(16:38):
the event that they see a person in there. Now,
just because you have a person doesn't necessarily mean they're deceased,
because I mean, listen, people can people can succumb or
I hate to use succumb. People can literally still be
alive with very shallow breathing, but they've been subjected to
(17:00):
smoke in elation, and so they'll check them for pulse.
You know, all these firefighters now or at least basic
paramedics to a certain degree, and they've got advanced life
saving saving skills and they can you know, kind of
assess people in an environment by the way, that is
on fire right and things are falling. That's the other
(17:22):
terrible part of this. So when they make entry into
this home, which by the way, is not an old
this is like kind of a series of ground level
kind of apartment kind of things that are there there standalone.
It's not like a tall structure. You're worried. You're worried
(17:43):
that first off, it's going to jump. That's one of
the big things. Interesting. You know, this call came up
at like eleven I think of like eleven twenty or
that's when the first first people rolled up on the scene.
Eleven twenty am, not PM. This is broad daylight ball,
And so they go in and they see what appears
(18:05):
to be a person. And of course, after you know,
after all a sudden done and they're getting the fire
under control and knock down, they realize that, you know,
this individual has deceased. So, I don't know, it's an
interesting world that they inhabit because you never know what
you're going to find or see when you walk in.
And here's another thing, And I just want folks to
(18:27):
understand this, how dynamic this is. When firefighters go into
a scene. It's kind of like EMTs when they roll
up on a motor vehicle accident or they roll out
on a shooting. They're not there to try to appreciate
the value of anything of anything in there that has
evidentiary value. Their sole purpose in this world is to
(18:48):
save lives. And we understand that those of us that
are last responders, we know that we have to interpret
even through the debris field that they've created when they're
trying to knock down the knock down the fire. See.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
So yeah, I mean, do you pull these guys in
after you know, when you're sitting there and you yeah,
you you challenge could not challenge question them over what
did you see when you first locked in the room?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Absolutely, And it's not done in a confrontational manner because
I see them as the heroes here. I'm nobody, you
know when when I'm talking to these cats. The beauty
thing about them is that, let's see, how can I
put this? They are vested, okay, but they're not. They
(19:36):
they're going to go into the next fire, and so
they have the ability. Their ability to recall what they
see is amazing in these traumatic circumstances because you know,
like me, if the thing was on fire, I'm getting
as far away from this thing as I can. They're
going to huddle up next to this thing and try
to knock it down, all right, and they're observing everything.
They have to be completely aware of what the fire
(19:59):
is in a affecting in order to knock it down.
So after they have completed their job and the investigators
show up, and that includes people like me, the police investigators,
and certainly the arson investigators, they will debrief and you
might talk directly to the team off the truck that
(20:19):
rolled in their first you're going to talk to their
lieutenant who's there, because they're going to write reports you
just and we have that understanding with them, this rapport,
if you will, about what kind of information we can
get from them. And in terrorist case, they were able
to determine that she was in fact deceased. I don't
(20:42):
know exactly what they saw specifically, because I'll go ahead
and let the cat out of the bag here. We're
going to find out. We're going to find out at
the turn of the new year, because this case is
finally going to go to trial with thousands and thousands
of documents, and there's a lot still that has not
(21:04):
been revealed about this case. And I understand that part
of it, but we're going to learn more. We're going
to learn more from the arson investigators because Dave back
to that pile of clothes, they call this an arson.
They've ruled out everything else. This is not like an
accidental event, you know, faulty wiring or a kerosene lantern
(21:27):
turned over, or is outlandish in that sense. I've actually
had people burn up from kerosene lanterns. By the way,
they're going to go in and they're going to tell
us in detail what they found, And with an arson
in particular, you look for the where the fire started.
(21:51):
And one of the kind of fascinating things is it
kind of at a baseline, you look for where the
most damned which has occurred. That makes sense, right, It's
very logical you look for because that means the fire
has been burning longer there than any other location. Okay,
but they were able to identify a pile of clothes,
(22:14):
so that means that the pile of clothes to in
some ways survived. Well Morgan, how to do that? If
you're talking about fire, you never know. There might have
been buttons, there might have been zippers, pile on top
of each other. That. Yeah, the fire is going to
maybe eradicate the cloth that the thing is made out of,
(22:34):
that the garment is made out of. But all those
little elements are going to drop down, you know, and
you're going to have them. There was there any accelerant involved?
Did somebody pour you know, uh, charcoal lighter or did
they use gasoline or what did they use? So that's
going to be something else that they would have no
(22:55):
pun intended sniffed out. I wonder back then, did they
bring arsen dogs on there. I know that they probably
collected samples from that whole area, and that debris field
right there. They would have lifted that entire thing up.
They probably put it in a sifter like you see
with archaeologist and anything that's in there, those little bits,
they're going to look for, particularly metallic bodies. And I
(23:17):
don't think it's hard to fathom this, but you don't
think about things that hold things together in life. When
you get into a debris field like this, you can
have bits of metal all over the place. This like
if you try to go into an environment like this
with a metal detector as opposed to like out in
an open field where somebody's been shot, you know, looking
for a projectile. It's kneeling a haystack tom because there's
(23:41):
so much metal in a house that you don't think about.
You know. It could be a button, it could be
a zipper, it could be paper clip it it could
be staples for all you know. So it could be
the nails that held down the carpet. All right, the
carpet might be gone, but those nails are still going
to be there. It's it's really a very highly specialized
(24:02):
form of an investigation.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
But when you for anybody who has ever had a
burn pile out in the backyard, not in a barrel,
but actually a pile that you made to burn things.
If you've ever seen this where maybe you put too
much on the pile to burn and you light it,
the fire burns the outside of the whatever you're burning,
and then if you pile stuff on top of it,
(24:25):
you just throwing it on there, putting too much on there,
and it starts to smolder and what have you. As
it catches more fires and more oxygen comes in, it
actually burns the outer shell. But you could in this
case with clothing, you could still have clothing that is
relatively unburned that's towards the bottom of the pile or
in the middle of the pile, because.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
It could and you know where else you're going to
have clothing if an individual is clothed. Let's just say
you've got an individual that is lying on their back
and killed. Say somebody has choked out and they're lying
on their back and somebody douses them in an accelerant.
(25:06):
You know, something flammable sets the body or the clothing
on fire. That reominant of clothing is still going to
be on their back because it's not burning. There's separation
between the body and the exterior, the upside of the
body rather the visible side. Well, those fragments of clothing,
(25:28):
you might still have fragments, but they're going to be
sign but you can roll the body over and when
you see that, you'll still be able to fully appreciate,
fully appreciate, you know, make manufacture. The tags will still
be in the in the collar. That's why you look
at the sophistication of somebody that sets a fire. Now,
(25:52):
I don't think that the fire was necessarily set in
this case in order to eradicate any evidence that a
human being was there. It was meant, I think, to
eradicate any kind of evidence that may have been there.
And of course this individual failed miserably because at the
(26:14):
conclusion of their investigation, we now know that not only
did he not eradicate the evidence of where the fire started,
he certainly didn't cover up what Terror's cause of death was. Fire,
(26:48):
in fact, is arguably the most destructive force in the
worldarticularly the world that we live in. You know, where
we're congregated together in neighborhoods and you know, all of
these sorts of things. It certainly strikes fear. I think
(27:09):
that most people would agree with that, it strikes fear fire.
We're just naturally fearful of it. Whereas you know, you
get me with a good a high quality glass of
rum and a really good cigar, and I start a
fire at my bonfire site. I'll sit there and stare
at it and try to warm up to it and
all that sort of thing. But that's beside the point.
(27:30):
For people that utilize fire, they have this idea, Dave,
that you're going to eradicate everything, and of course that
is an empirical impossibility. You can't. You can't as a
matter of fact, And I know we've talked about this before,
but as a matter of fact, by virtue of introducing
(27:51):
fire and accelerance into an environment, you're actually creating more evidence.
Now we might be absent some things, but sometimes you
can create more evidence. You can create evidence that many
people don't think about, like the intensity of fire. If
I have a location where or if I have a
(28:13):
body that has been burned, let's say that their head
is more affected or damaged than their lower limbs, I
know that somebody has made an attempt to maybe even
put more accelerant on the head in the face than
they did on the feet and that they just keep
(28:33):
adding it to it over a period of time. And
that's those little nuanced areas that you have to look at.
Fire investigation, by far is the most difficult practice in
forensic science and is in my opinion, it's the most
(28:55):
esteemed relative to the guys that go out in the
field and do it. It takes so much training. You
have to have an awareness that most people don't because
I walk into a house fire, David, and everything looks
black and gray to me, and it would to you
too everybody else. But arson investigators, let me tell you something,
They walk into an environment and they have a completely
(29:16):
different spectrum that they're looking at this thing through. They
don't see just black and gray. Like if you were
to take the grill cover off of your charcoal grill,
you and I would look down and we'd see mushed
up bits of you know, old charcoal that's just kind
of settling there. And that's the way fire feels look
like debris feels to us. But for those that are
(29:40):
trained in arson, certainly not for us. Though. In forensic
medicine and medical legal death investigation, there's certain things that
we look for in the autopsy room that fire doesn't destroy,
and in this case a lot was left behind relative
to terrors homicide.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
All right, is the fire the reason it took nine
years to actually get formal documentation on her death?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Good question. I don't know that it was because, listen,
the GBI was involved in this investigation, the State Medical
Examiner was. So what makes her case different from all
the other fire deaths? You know that State Medical Examiner's
offices located the Primary, The Primary what they refer to
(30:36):
as headquarters there is located just east of it of
downtown Atlanta in De Caap County, Dave. They see fire
deaths all the time. They roll in from all over
the state. I mean literally, they have a transport system
that brings bodies to that location from all over the
state of Georgiana. Now they have satellite labs that are
out there, but can you imagine, I mean, they're servicing
(31:00):
lots of counties. You're going to have fire deaths. So
what separates Terra's death from all the other fire deaths
that are out there that they're still having a piece
together and try to understand. I think that I think
that it lies somewhere else. I truly do, because they
(31:22):
were able to determine manner and cause of death. I mean,
you know, they they ruled her death as a homicide. Okay,
they ruled it as a homicide. And they found physical
evidence of trauma. And I'm not talking to David. I
am not talking here about some kind of you know,
(31:46):
type of trauma. That is, they found things that are
so detailed relative to her death, they would have seen
that in the immediate You want to know what I'm
thinking about right now. Yeah, what I'm thinking about right
now is that they're looking at a young lady who
(32:10):
has died and has been burned or has been subjected
to fire in proximity to fire, and Dave, they were
able to appreciate that she's been strangled. Now that's pretty
that's pretty dog on obvious. Okay, because when you when
you go into an autopsy and you begin to reflect
(32:32):
the tissue on the neck, okay, which is something that's
commonly done. You reflect, I say reflect reflect actually is
a term that you used, like kind of appealing back,
if you will, so that you're not just looking at
the skin. You're looking at the musculature beneath the skin.
(32:53):
And there's a particular way in which we do this.
I'm not going to go into it right now, but
when you reflect that skin, you can act actually look
at the neck and you see you hear me talk
about strap muscles many times in the neck. If you'll
just kind of place your hand on your anterior neck
on either side of your laynix, you know that cartilaginous body,
(33:15):
it's right in the middle there in those muscle groups
right there. If someone has been strangled, whether it's with
a ligature like a rope or if it's a manual
strangulation where you're talking about the hands, you're going to
see focal areas of hemorrhage in there. Well, Dave, I
got to tell you, brother, they I think they saw
that that day. They saw that there. So I'm coming
back to what you had mentioned about why did it
(33:38):
takes along? You know where I'm hoping that we really
get a solid answer, And I think Defense council will
probably ask this, why did it take along? You know?
And I don't care if the defense is asking it right,
they're going to have to, you know, maybe they'll have
to explain that court. I don't know. It might be
a question that will come up. But not only did
(33:59):
they find that this poor young lady had been strangled.
They discovered that she had been beaten, which we know
that if there's evidence of beating, that means that the
injuries that are presenting on her body that happened in life.
(34:20):
This was not post mortem. Neither was the hemorrhage in
her neck. So this is an anti mortem event that's
leading to death. Oh and by the way, yes, she
was stabbed too. And here's here's one of the more
ghastly things. And I'm not going to go into detail
about this, and you can take away from it what
you what you want. But this suspect that they have
(34:43):
in custody, Dave, they have charged him with aggravated sodomy.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Holy moly.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Okay, so that's that's different than rape. Now, you know,
all all our friends out there, they can draw their
own conclusions about that. But we're going to learn more
about that in this trial that's going to happen after
the first year. And I think that probably the picture
that is painted is going to be something that is
(35:09):
so horrific when this begins to play out, you know,
in the courtroom there in Athens, Clark County, Georgia, it's
going to be. It's going to be very striking. They're
going to have a Dave forgive me. You had mentioned
a number a moment ago, and it was almost mind boggling.
(35:30):
How much documentation do they have on this case?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Twenty five thousand documents associated with this case, And as
you and I were talking, it doesn't mean twenty five
thousand pages. It means twenty five thousand folders that could
contain one you know, it could be one sheet of
information from a police report to a full one hundred
page report on the button they found in the bathroom.
(35:54):
I mean it varies. But twenty five thousand documents. And
when the discussion came up about the case and being
prepared for trial, it wasn't the defense asking for more time.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
It was both.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
They were both fine being the prosecution and defense. Really again, now,
a lot of times we come into a case and
we want to see the bad guy put away, which
is well, we always come into a case like that,
But we are supposedly looking for the truth. And if
you're looking for the truth, the prosecutors have to be
open to actually looking at all the information as well,
(36:28):
not just the defense looking for holes. They're looking at
the entire case to make sure they have everything. So
for the prosecutors to say, yeah, there's so much information
we've got to go through. We're cool. We're good with
taking till January. You know, we have gone twenty four
years now. A couple more months is going to be fine.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
But Joe how the people shepherd saught something in the
news as well. The family. The family was good with
that too. Good.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I'm glad I saw that.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
The comment about that. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Good, I'm glad they were because I you know, I
do think about the families.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
It's just it's more than just reporting on what's taking place.
It's really has over the years become more about the family.
I always think about the parents and the children and
extended family members who've lived with this nightmare.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
But well, you know, here here's a really sad portion
of this day. Terror's Daddy's gone. Now.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I know.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
That hurts, you know, and that's you know, when he
closed his eyes and death. You know, you think about
mm stuff. Yeah, it is, it really is, man. You know,
you think about what were his and I would not
(37:41):
presume to know, but you know, you you get wrapped
up in the tragedy of it all, and it really is.
I hope this is what I hope and uh and
I really do have hope. I hope that that they
have covered all of their bases from a prosecution stand point,
that everything has been considered in this case. I'm sorry, continue,
(38:04):
I just know it just wells up in you after
a while.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Man, it does.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
And Joey, what condition was her body when the fire
is out? We now have a victim here? What condition
was her body when they called in?
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, it's hard to know at this point in time
because a lot of that information has not not come out.
I want to know. I'd like to know specifically to
what degree she was subjected to heat injuries. Okay, I'd
like to know, first off, the level of trauma. They
(38:47):
talked about sharp force injuries, they've talked about beating, and
that assessment will be you know, on full display, you know,
in you know, on the stand when, because they're gonna
and this will be a very dramatic moment day because
there in this particular case, the forensic pathologist will literally
(39:09):
be able to tell us about those last moments of
her life. Fire has a way of doing that. You know,
they'll be able to talk to things about, you know,
like smoke inholation and all those sorts of things. I
don't know that that that will be an issue. They
would have done a car box of human cloth. And
it seems as though in this particular case that that
(39:32):
fire was used after the fact. And here's a really
odd bit to this day. In our previous segment, we
talked about when the first responders and you'd made note
of this, thank you for that that first responders rolled
out at you know, just passed. Well, it's like eleven
(39:53):
what was it, eleven, twenty eleven, twenty a m. Man, Am,
here's the thing, Dave. This will make your skin, this
will this will put us this will put a chill
on you. That fire was started in the middle of
the day or in the mid morning. And back then
(40:15):
I remember they were talking about there was no cover
to hide. If you're going to burn something up, you know,
set a structure on fire. That's something where you kind
of steal away in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
She was last seen, I believe by her friends. She missed,
missed a meeting and and then she is at home.
The one chilling thing about this, how long was this
monster in the house with her? I just let that
(40:52):
sink in just for a second, and as a final
I do. We're going to set a fire, and we
feel confident enough that upon setting set fire, we're gonna
walk away in the middle of the day, and we're
not We're not talking about a city here that's kind
(41:14):
of sleepy, you know, you're talking about the largest campus
in the state of Georgia, that it is existing in
a very busy town and you're going to set a
fire and just walk away in broad daylight. What had
happened the hours prior to That's what I want to know.
(41:35):
And that's that's what is so chilling about this case
because to me, I think that there might be elements
of torture involved in this, perhaps menacing, you know, as
her life is going to slip away, she knows that
(41:57):
it's not going to end well. And that's the It's
very sad, I mean it is. But we do know
that we have somebody in custody and what's his name again.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Dave Edric Lamont Boust. He's been charged with felony murdered,
two counts, aggravated assault, possession of a knife during the
commission of a crime aggravated sawdom me, concealing the death
of another person, campering with evidence, and first jury arson.
Those charges let you know a lot of information about
what's going to come out of trial.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yeah, they do, they do. I mean you're talking about
stacking it to the ceiling on this guy. It's uh
and you can It's like a road map, isn't it, Dave,
You know all of those counts along the way. You
know what's going to happen with him? Well, I'll tell you.
He's going to go into the Athens Clark County Courthouse
(42:53):
with his defense team, and I hope he's prepared because
it sounds as though that the state has had a
fishent amount of time put the case together. They've certainly
got an overwhelming number of documents. Let's just hope that
they do, in fact prosecute this case in a manner
(43:17):
in which would honor Terra and her family that have
been waiting for so very many years. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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